aThe grassy, creekside park at the back of Elk’s Lodge in Milwaukee, Oregon, housed about 100 evacuees in a variety of RVs, cars and tents.
Some, such as Eric Sam, a lumber mill worker, have been evacuated twice in recent days.
“First we were in Reg Reagan City, then they moved us here.”
Sam said he, his wife and their three teenage children fled the first mall on Tuesday for the grounds of Klkkmas Community College Ledge. Then, late Thursday night, the college, along with most of Oregon City, raised the fire warning level to two levels.
Sam’s employer, who is also close to Mollala, locked his door in a situation that could be considered a movie. A picture on his phone a few days ago showed the family home, bathed in a blood red light as he was returning from a thick smoke.
Now, the family is divided to sleep, some in their tent alone, some in their car.
“It’s hard to buy a tent because everyone wants one,” Sam said.
At least half a million people in Oregon, one-tenth of the state’s population, were under evacuation orders by Thursday evening, with fires being forced to evacuate large parts of Klamas Kamas Mass County in the southeastern part of the Portland metropolitan area. Some parts of Oregon have not seen such a severe blaze in 30,000 to 900 years, Oregon State University pyrogeographer Mag Kravchuk told the Guardian.
Dickey Prairie’s Shyane Summers, also located south-east of Mollala, was evacuated twice on Thursday as the fire threat area expanded.
Summer and her boyfriend, David Plane, were housed in a three-tent complex with Christopher Smith and Sidney Vandenbroder, another young couple who fled the area around Mollala.
The housing allotment also included four cats, including a playful ginger kitten and two small dogs. (PL, who lives in Madras but drove over Mount Hood to help get out of Summer, commented that he had brought “all the animals except the horses” to stay at the Dickie Prairie.)
Summer lived at home like her grandmother and great-grandmother, who now lived in Milwaukee with other relatives.
The smoke was so thick when they evacuated on Wednesday that “you can barely see you from me,” he said, showing visibility of about 6 feet.
Summers said she almost fainted as she left her belongings. “I’ve never been so scared,” he said.
“Now we don’t know if we have a house to go back to.”
The fire made the familiar atmosphere unrecognizable. “You can see the orange glow on the horizon,” said Summers, and the ground was filled with “coin-sized pieces.”
Asked about the eruption of a mountain volcano in Washington, D.C., south of Washington in 1980, Summers said he could recall situations like the one his grandmother or great-grandmother faced recently. Thick ash accumulated in the streets of Portland and other parts of northwestern Oregon.
Christopher Smith, his friend, said there had been “ashes in the streets” in Mollala these days.
Smith said at least 50 people stayed in Mollala and they actually took the steps. They were now “patrolling” the neighborhoods and streets.
He said he had read on a Facebook page associated with the community that “they had found some people who were trying to set fires and were chasing them”, but acknowledged that the group was not the most reliable source of information.
“There is a lot. You never know what is true and what is not. “
On Thursday, three journalists in Mollala confronted three civilians armed with assault rifles and ordered them to leave the city.
Meanwhile Regina was sitting at a picnic table with Christina Carovez of Reagan City, her golden acquisition Emma, with whom she was sharing a small tent.
She never felt the weather like a fire. She had lived in Reg Regan City all her life, but the dry wind that blew through the area before the fire was an event that “never happened until I was aware of it.”
She said the healthy wisteria vine on her chicken run by the wind “completely dried up”. “Moisture was sucked out of it.”
Carovex blamed these events largely on one factor: “None of this would be serious if we didn’t have global warming.”
In the grand, medieval Alex Hall, Sue Mitchell happily showed ready food, toilet paper, bottled water and other goods, which was the fruit of a “overwhelming community response”, but added that they were still short of tents and many beds that made their homes. “Nothing” was arriving after fleeing.
As she described the charitable efforts of the Brotherhood Order, more local residents arrived with additional donations, and she said local businesses and restaurants were providing catering and supplies.
EVQS was unanimous on the generosity of the community response that Alex was compiling.
“It’s all very stressful, but people are very kind,” Carovex said.
Manav Singh contributed to this report
